It’s not easy being green: Religious attacks against environmentalism

Decades ago, if you heard that a group of family-focused Christian conservatives did a lecture series called Resisting the Green Dragon, you might have thought it was part of the war on drugs. But today, the attacks are against a 21st-century threat: Environmentalism.

The campaign targets groups like Greenpeace and environmental lobbies who, they say, make nature a priority over people and are taking over classrooms, political bodies and society as a whole.

“Today’s environmentalism isn’t a neutral set of ideas that can be tacked onto the Christian faith without theological compromise,” said Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, the founder of the Cornwall Alliance. “Instead, it promotes its own worldview and its own doctrines of God, creation, humanity, sin, and salvation. And those doctrines aren’t Biblical.”

The organization isn’t against all notions of environmental care, just the “radical” approach of contemporary eco-friendly groups. According to Cornwall:

Environmental policies should harness human creative potential by expanding political and economic freedom, instead of imposing draconian restrictions or seeking to reduce the “human burden” on the natural world. Suppressing human liberty and productivity in the name of environmental protection is antithetical to the principles of stewardship and counterproductive to the environment.

In the Resisting the Green Dragon series, speakers from groups like the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, National Religious Broadcasters and other socially conservative Christian groups focus on the scriptural call to meet human needs as a priority.

Still, movements within nearly every religious tradition have incorporated environmental consciousness into the practice, using religious values and teachings to apply to how we create, consume and dispose of goods.

Christians within mainline Protestant denominations and evangelical bodies have coined the term “creation care” as a way to approach the environment from a biblical perspective. In part, the movement represents a more open, contemporary worldview that better resonates with younger Christians. (See Religion Dispatches’ article on “the graying and greening religious right.”)

Within Judaism, there’s the notion of tikkun olam, or “repairing the world,” which has inspired synagogues to adopt sustainable designs, recycle, grow their own food, push for eco-friendly laws and do whatever they can to be better stewards of the earth.